In my first post for Lara, I talked about the big question of whether to use Facebook pages or groups for your community. Now that you’ve set up your Page or Group, here are five strategies that you can use to make your content professional, useful and promote engagement with your followers:

1) Watch other pages.

Are they good at engaging? Do they have engaged followers? What are they doing that works well? What doesn’t work as well? You can get ideas for your own Facebook strategy by watching what works for others. One size doesn’t fit all, so if a technique doesn’t work, move on and try something else.

2) Link to Content

Here’s a little secret - the content doesn’t have to be yours every time! In fact, you should share others’ content. Do you have a question or opinion based on something you read? Link to it! Make sure your FB followers can see what prompted your query so they get the full context. If you want people to give opinions about something, link to it so they don’t have to go looking for it. The easier you make it for your followers to engage, the more likely they are to jump into the conversation.

3)Post to your page daily.

If you’re wondering when, you might be interested in this article from Mashable. Or this one from Social Times. All I get from these, and countless other similar articles, is that the perfect time is a moving target and probably depends on your audience anyway. Who are you targeting? When are they most likely to be on Facebook? Answer those questions and then do your own research of the trial and error variety.

4) Don’t spam your fans.

The average lifespan of a post on twitter is 10 minutes (this can vary a great deal based on how many people you’re following). Facebook doesn’t move nearly as fast - the lifespan is roughly 3 hours for a single post. Some Facebook pages can get away with quite a few posts by updating followers with up-to-the-minute information (news organizations). Most other pages don’t need to post updates more than two or three times a day - more than once in three hours can be a turn-off for some users.

5) Ask questions.

What’s the best way to start a conversation? Ask questions:

Input about products and services.

How your fans’ day is going.

How they spent their long weekend.

Topics, current events or news items relevant to your page’s purpose.

But whatever you ask, be sure to show an interest in the answers. Interact with your audience and be engaged.

There is no magic formula for growing your page following. Pages grow at different rates, but having good content and an actively engaged page will go a long way toward growing your audience.

What are some innovative ways that you’ve seen pages successfully engage with followers?